HK could dispose of hundreds of thousands of unused vaccine doses
Hong Kong may in the near future need to throw away millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses because they are approaching their expiry day and not enough people have enrolled in the jabs, the official warned on Tuesday (May 25). Hong Kong is among the few places in the world fortunate enough to have guaranteed more than enough dosages to inoculate its entire population of 7.5 million guys. But swirling distrust of the government since it stamps out dissent - combined with online misinformation and a lack of urgency in the comparatively virus-free city - has resulted in entrenched vaccine hesitancy. and a dismal inoculation travel.
On Tuesday an associate of the government's vaccine process force warned that Hong Kong people "only have a three-month window" prior to the city's initial batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines walk out time."The vaccines all possess expiry dates," Thomas Tsang, a past controller of the Center for Health Cover, told RTHK radio."They can not be used following the expiry time and the community vaccination centers for BioNTech will, according to provide programs, cease operating after September."
Tsang said it was "just not best suited" that Hong Kong was sitting down on an unused pile of dosages while the remaining environment "is scrambling for vaccines".And he warned innovative doses were unlikely to come to be delivered."What we have is probably all we have for all of those other year," he said.
Hong Kong bought 7.5 million doses each of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and China's Sinovac vaccine.The latter has yet to be approved by the World Health Organization but was fast-tracked for use by city well being regulators.In addition, it pre-ordered 7.5 million doses of AstraZeneca jabs but scrapped that package earlier in the entire year with authorities expressing they planned to utilize the money for second-generation vaccines next year.
